Global Health Corps (GHC) places recent university graduates to year-long assignments with public health organizations. Last night members of the Google.org team were delighted to celebrate the inaugural class of Global Health Corps Fellows as they assembled at the Stanford University School of Medicine before embarking on their year-long placements in Malawi, Tanzania, Rwanda, New Jersey, and Boston. The Fellows met for the first time during a two-week course to prepare them for their upcoming assignments.

The Global Health Corps concept was a product of some exciting brainstorming during the aids2031 conference hosted by Google.org in March 2008. GHC's 6-person leadership team includes Barbara Bush as President, and two Googlers, Charlie Hale and Andrew Bentley. "This has been an amazing collaborative effort. We've had an incredible amount of support from a number of partners, and are confident this first class of fellows will have a tremendous impact," says Charlie Hale.

The organization strives to improve the quality of health services for the poor by matching talented pairs of recent university graduates from Africa and America with health-focused non-profit organizations.

Angie Bengtson from Minnesota and Mweya Clement from Tanzania are a duo that will begin their one year assignment with SACIDs (Southern African Centre for Infectious Disease Surveillance) in August. As Research Analysts, they will develop and improve early warning systems of infectious disease. Angie and Clement are among 22 promising young fellows chosen from a pool of 1,200 applicants. The fellows will promote cultural awareness while improving healthcare systems in need.

We salute the new class of fellows and wish them luck in their exciting new adventure!

Posted by Kataneh Sarvian, Google.org

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Recently I was in Cambodia with a group of Googlers for "Gcamp" at the Royal University of Phnom Penh when the country's first H1N1 (swine flu) case was discovered - a 16-year old American girl on an exchange student visit. The pandemic had traveled the globe and reached South-East Asia. All visitors to the country are now greeted by quarantine unit officers, equipped with paper forms and a fishbowl-like isolation room for suspected carriers, trying to keep the bug out. For years the world feared a possible flu pandemic not traveling to, but coming from Cambodia or one of its neighbors - an H5N1 (bird flu) pandemic that has not happened yet. So far we have been lucky - bird flu is quite deadly but has not yet been very contagious. Swine flu has quickly become a pandemic but is not yet very virulent.

We get many new infectious diseases from the animals we eat or live with - poultry, livestock, wildlife, or insects such as mosquitoes. Some diseases have been around for a long time but we know surprisingly little about them. Rift Valley Fever, for example, periodically kills people and livestock in east Africa, most recently in early 2007 when 300 people died in Kenya, Tanzania and Somalia. But we don't know where the disease hides between outbreaks, how it gets transmitted, or whether people are getting sick because they get infected by mosquitoes or by handling, or eating, sick animals. Late last year Google.org made a $5 million grant to icipe (African Insect Science for Food and Health) and partners to improve the discovery and surveillance of insect-carried infectious diseases, particularly Rift Valley Fever in East Africa. The project will collect an estimated 25,000 insect, wildlife, livestock and human samples and hunt for bugs using state-of-the-art biotech methods. Roche, the health care company, has now donated a 454 Genome Sequencer FLX system to the project to strengthen the labs of one of the project's partners, ILRI-BecA, biotech center of excellence for East Africa. This is the first second generation sequencing platform to be installed in the region and will significantly increase the project capacity to discover new pathogens.

The project will screen the samples with multiplex PCR and/or sequence on the Roche 454 platform and will meet its goals if it finds, within 3 years:

* 5 novel Rift Valley Fever variants
* 5 new disease vectors (e.g. insects)
* 20 known viruses that are identified in Kenya for the first time, and
* 5 novel potential pathogen variants (i.e. 5 new diseases).

If those goals are met then we will be one step closer to predicting and preventing the next pandemic that may come out of East Africa.

Posted by Frank Rijsberman, Google.org

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Google.org is pleased to announce that The Final Inch, a film produced with support from and in collaboration with Google.org, is now available on DVD. The Final Inch received a 2008 Oscar nomination in the category of Best Documentary (Short Film).

To facilitate wide global distribution, the DVD has been priced inexpensively and captioned with subtitles for 19 languages. You may order a copy of the film at Amazon.com. Purchasers of the DVD are welcome to show the film at educational events and not-for-profit fundraising events targeted at polio eradication.

Google.org plans to donate $2 from the purchase of each DVD, though at least December 31, 2009, to polio eradication partners such as Rotary International and UNICEF. In February of this year, UNICEF issued press release about The Final Inch that effectively outlines what a crucial moment it is for the polio eradication effort in India.

Posted by Gregory Miller, Director, Google.org

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